


One Night In Lucerne

by Wonderlandleighleigh



Series: Don't get saucy with me, Bearnaise! [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Chuck (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 14:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1692221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wonderlandleighleigh/pseuds/Wonderlandleighleigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of "He Was My Boyfriend!" Steve and Zondra share a hotel room in Lucerne.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Night In Lucerne

"Tell me something nobody knows about you." 

Zondra glances down at him from the bed and grins. "I want you to get on the bed." 

Steve grins a little and glances up at her from the floor, a single pillow and a thin sheet his only bedding. "I knew that already." 

"It's still true," she says. 

"You're taking the bed." 

"Nobody ever said if you got on the bed, I was gonna get off," Zondra smirks.

He huffs and shakes his head. "I'm good right here." 

Zondra rolls her eyes playfully at him and flops back on the mattress.

"So?" 

"What counts as 'nobody else'?" 

Steve thinks about that for a moment. "Something the CATs don't know." 

She grins. "I can sew." 

He grins back. "So can I?" 

"Yeah?" she asks teasingly. "You sewed your own prom dress?" 

"Well...no," he fumbles. "I didn't wear a dress to my prom, but...but some of the girls I went to school with, they made their own. My mother made our clothes a lot of the time, too...I mean I guess it's not so common now, when you can just go to the local K-Wall and-" 

"The what?" 

Steve frowns. "The K-Wall...the...Oh," he flushes a little. "The...Wall Target? Target...K?" 

Zondra watches him struggle and tries not to laugh. "Uh...You mean...Wal-Mart....and...Target? And K-Mart? The big box stores that sell everything under the sun?" 

He takes a breath. "Right. Yeah." He grins at her, obviously embarrassed. "It's great that you sew. That's...that's great." 

She smiles. "Thanks." 

He glances up at her a little nervously before asking his next question quickly. "What's a Trapper-Keeper?" 

Zondra blinks, looking a little bewildered. "What?" 

"Trapper...Trapper-Keepers...?" 

"They're binders that kids used for school a couple decades ago," she tells him. "Why?" 

"It was just something Chuck said," Steve explains, looking somewhat relieved. "On the plane ride to Germany, he was talking about...Trapper-Keepers, and...and I didn't know what they were..." 

She smiles at him fondly. "Did you think it was a sex thing?" 

"No," he says stubbornly, but stops. "Maybe." 

She laughs a little, and he turns a light shade of pink. 

"Sorry," she says. "It's just that you're so cute." 

Steve huffs and grins ruefully. "Y'know. That's what the girls used to say before I joined the war effort. And then they'd ruffle my hair and flirt with my best friend."

"Says the man who has repeatedly turned down my offers to join me on the bed," Zondra points out. "Don't you accuse me of friend-zoning you." 

"Friend...what?" 

"Friend-zoning," she explains. "When a girl tells a guy she's not interested in having sex, but she'd sure like to be his friend, because she likes him as a person, but doesn't want to bone him." 

Steve opens his mouth and then closes it. "I...I didn't know there was a word for it." 

"There is now, because men are whiny," Zondra says, crossing her arms. 

"Rejection hurts." 

"So does the idea that my friendship isn't worth some guys time, and that all I'm good for is a roll in the sheets," Zondra snaps. 

He stays silent for a long time after that. "If it makes any difference, I never thought that way. The girls Bucky set me up with...I liked them as people...they didn't seem interested in getting to know me..." 

She looks down at him. 

"So I would ask if we could go to dinner again, and nine times out of ten, it was a no," Steve says. "And that's fine, that's their choice. But...it wasn't ever really about sex or even romance for me so much as not feeling so lonely. Since I was sick a lot, I spent a lot of time by myself. And like I said, rejection hurts." 

Zondra stares at him quietly for a long moment.

"What?" Steve asks, sitting up. "What'd I say? Did I say something wrong?" 

"Nope," Zondra says. "Just...sitting here, feeling like the scum of the earth. You know how it is." 

He laughs a little. "What?" 

"You could totally be an enormous jerk!" Zondra cries. "You could be this weird, awkward, relic from the forties-" 

He gives her a look. "I am a-" 

"No, no, no I mean...you could be like...racist and think women should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen and-" 

"What?!" Steve cries. "If women had been barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, there woulda been nobody left at home to run things during the war," he says, looking at her like she's crazy. "I just wish they hadn't tried to push women back out when everybody got home, cause let's be honest, most guys were so damn shell-shocked they probably coulda used the break." 

Zondra tilts her head at him. "What would you have done after the war? If that plane hadn't gone down?" 

He thinks about that for a long moment. "I don't know," he says softly. "Maybe Peggy and I woulda gotten married...had a couple of kids or something. I could make them peanut butter sandwiches and teach 'em how to paint." His eyes look a little far away.

Zondra grins sadly. "You wanted to be a stay-at-home dad?" 

"I guess I figured that with no war on, America didn't have much use for me," Steve shrugs. "The truth is Peggy probably woulda dragged me into founding SHIELD with her and Howard and Phillips. I don't know. Maybe then things woulda turned out different, if I were around. Maybe I coulda helped Howard...helped Peggy more so she wouldn't..." 

Zondra sighs a little and slides off the bed and onto the floor, next to him, wrapping an arm around him and rubbing his shoulder. 

He glances at her briefly, and takes a breath. "I'm okay. I am. It's not a rabbit hole I should go down." 

"Do you do that a lot?" she asks softly.

"Sometimes," he mutters, glancing at her again. "Sometimes I can't help it."

Zondra moves a little closer, her other arm wrapping around him. "Anything I can do to help?"

He looks her in the eyes now and swallows, feeling warm suddenly. "Uh..."

She grins, raising her eyebrows. “You okay there, Rogers?”

Steve swallows hard. “Fine. I’m…I’m fine. I’m…you’re just…supposed to be on the bed.”

“I don’t do ‘supposed to be’ very well,” Zondra tells him playfully. “You want me to back off?”

He shakes his head slowly. “No. No, I don’t want that.” He rests his hand hesitantly on her back, thumb brushing against her shirt.

“This is nice,” she says, her own fingers tapping gently against his shoulder.

Steve nods and lets his nose bump lightly against her temple. “Zondra…I…I really…I really like you…”

She smiles and turns to face him fully. “I really like you too. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

“Unless I was a mark,” Steve points out, only half-joking.

She considers that and shrugs. “But you’re not. You’re just the guy I’ve been going on dates with.”

He smiles at that. “I like that. I like that it feels…normal. Not much does on a daily basis anymore.”

“Normal can be nice,” Zondra agrees, resting her hand at the nape of his neck, playing with the hair there a little. “But it can be overrated, too.”

“Bucky used to say that,” Steve muses, sitting back against the wall with her. “When I would talk about wanting to be normal, instead of weak and sick all the time.” He grins a little at her. "I always thought he was full of it." 

Zondra snickers a little. "What about me? You think I'm full of it, too?" 

His grin falls quickly. "Oh, I didn't mean- I just-" 

She laughs a little harder and nudges him. "Relax. I was teasing." 

Steve blows out a breath, rubbing at his face."I'm not very good at being teased. I don't know if you noticed." 

"I may have caught onto that a little," Zondra says. 

He gives her a sheepish grin and lets his head rest against the wall, looking at her. "I think I like Lucerne. The view, the food, the company." 

"Steve." 

"Hm?" 

Zondra raises an eyebrow. "When are you gonna stop talking so I can kiss you?" 

Steve feels his face go distinctly red, but he can't help grinning a little. "How's now? Now's good, right?"


End file.
